Recollecting my Computing History

As I went through this months Digit Magazines editorial it instantly took me to my good old computing past. It was the year 1989 when I joined St.Joseph's Central School (CBSE Board), Mysore from St.Rita's School (State Board). In these days Computers in school were pretty new in almost all parts of India. I was lucky enough to be imparted education in a school which was rated one of the best schools in Mysore. Since our school was always ahead when it came to imparting the best things available, so it also happened with computers. In the period 1989-90 computers gradually started within our schools premises due to a tie-up with a local computer institute called Zephyr institute.

The Zephyr guys used to carry a handful of the big IBM 386 machined with 5 1/2" floppy drives in the morning & at the days end would take it back. This was very disappointing to few students like me & few others who suddenly discovered there nac towards this stream. Then came the period 1990-91 when our school set-up their own Computer Lab & bought around 6-10 machines. I was in the 7th Std during this period & started learning DBase III+, DBase IV, GW-BASIC & Lotus 1-2-3 in the years that came in. I used to always excel in this subject & used to be my computer teachers' pet. To relax, we used to sneak in to the Computer Lab in the lunch hours & request the computer teacher to play Round 42, Gobman, Packman, Mario, Chess & many other games. Round 42 used to be my favourite game those days. During this period I couldn't even dream of owning my own machine since my family was not that financially strong those days. I used to often visit my friend Harish's bunglow to play some Car Racing games on his machine. This is the way I used to satisfy my needs.

In the year 1994 I shifted to Mumbai & joined the junior college. During the period 1993-19 of 94 I had lost quite a lot of touch with computers. Oh... yes... it was now called the PC. My dad used to take me to his office to practice typing & Word perfect. Time went past & I cleared my 12th & joined B.Sc. During this period my dad did a tremendous job of enrolling me to NIIT's GNIIT course, a decision which I feel changed my life. At NIIT I truely discovered that I was good in this field & thought of going ahead with a carrrier in IT. My NIIT institute located at Hasanabad Lane at Santacruz (W) was a tremendous place for me. Since it was close to my house, I used to spend quite a lot of time here if not in the college. The trainers here were very good & it also housed the NIIT Drome, a dedicated computing area to spend your own time on research. I used to research on a lot of latest technologies available those days (1996). Though the GNIIT course mostly taught me coding, I realised how good I was in IT. I was a topper in my GNIIT course in most of my semesters.

Year 1999, I graduated in Physics & joined B.Tech (Electronic Instrumentation). Since my marks in B.Sc were not very good, I didn't get an option to select Computer technology. Anyways, I continued this way & was happy that Electronic Instrumentation taught me how computers can be interfaced with Engineering devices. My passion towards core computing, which had now diverted from coding to IT Infrastructure Services (Servers, Networks, etc) still continued. Finally I graduated from my college in 2002 as a University Topper (All Streams) & joined NCR Corporation as a Network Analyst, my first job in the world of IT Infrastructure.

This is my Computing History & my passion towards IT still continues.

Quick Web Forms using Google Spreadsheets

Many-a-times you might have felt about collecting data from a selected group of people on the web. The absence of a proper Web / Server has always made this a difficult task to collect data through forms.

Now don't worry, through Google Spreadsheets you can easily create quick Web Forms & the data captured from these forms get stored in Google Docs as Spreadsheets. Though currently the functionalities are a little bit restrictive, you can still go ahead & create the forms containing Text Boxes, Radio Buttons, Combo & List Boxes, to satisfy your basic needs.

So why waste your time hosting your own Web / Database Server, create your own Web Form from http://spreadsheets.google.com/newform .

Rush !!! Register !!! - New Yahoo IDs in store for you

For those who have missed the Yahoo ID Bus its a chance to catch up. To be clear, some of us like me had registered on yahoo.com & yahoo.co.in servers pretty late & missed in getting our favourite & most preferred login IDs. I missed the Yahoo ID Bus since someone had already taken the ID preferred by me.

Not to worry, Yahoo has launched a new domain ymail.com & those who would like to choose a much more preferred ID register ASAP before you miss the Bus this time too. Hey... forgot to tell you people that this time I did not miss the Bus :)

So what are you waiting for.

Making a Customised Installation CD (Slipstreaming) using nLite

Today morning my friend came with a Compaq Presario v3000 Laptop & told me that he is no more interested in continuing with the default Windows Vista OS that came pre-installed in the Laptop. He was interested in downgrading it to Windows Xp Pro. I never thought that downgrading an OS in a Laptop would be quite a difficult task.

I inserted the original WinXP Bootable CD & booted the Laptop from the same. The installation started smoothly & then bang !!! an error saying "Windows cannot detect a Hard Drive connected...". After a few rounds of trial & errors we discovered that the Laptops' SATA Hard disks' driver was not built into the WinXP CD & it thus required a floppy containing the SATA drivers. The Laptop did not have a floppy drive & then I started Googling around looking around for a solution to this problem.

(My site statistics show that this is one of my most successful posts in my Blog. Unfortunately, almost all my readers forget to drop me a THANK YOU message after getting the required results :-( . I would feel nice if you could comment on this post after successfully burning a Customized CD using nLite. This would inspire me to write more.)

Now I would explain the entire procedure of using a very useful & free application named nLite which would help me in making my customised WinXP bootable CD integrated with the SATA driver. Thought the steps described below are specific to Compaq Presario v3000 model, the same procedure can be repeated to make any customised installation CD say Windows 2000, Office 2003 integrated with an Service Packs, Hot fixes, etc..... a procedure which is technically known as slipstreaming.

Procedure -

1. Download nLite.
   
2. Download Compaq Presario 3777TU SATA driver.
3. The SATA driver file name will mostly be sp38088.exe. Start the self-extracting setup by executing this file & when prompted, select the temporary folder where the files would get extracted. Once the files are extracted, cancel the setup.
4. Copy the folder named "32" located at "\files" into a new folder, say sata.
5. Install nLite.
6. Execute nLite & proceed though the wizard.
7. In the second screen on "Windows Installation Folder", browse to your CD-ROM containing the WinXP with SP2 setup & point to the same. Once selected the installer will prompt you to select the destination folder where the setup needs to be copied onto the hard disk. Once the copying is complete, this screen will display the details of the OS.

8. Now click next & on the screen on "Presets" just select next.

9. In the next screen on "Task Selection", select "Service Pack", "Drivers" & also "Bootable ISO" to make the CD bootable. Now click on "Next".









10. Now on the next screen on "Service Pack" select the Windows XP SP3 file "WindowsXP-KB936929-SP3-x86-ENU.exe" located on your hard drive. Once the file gets selected the display on the top of the window changes from "Windows XP Professional SP2" to "Windows XP Professional SP3". Now click "Next".





11. Now on the next screen on "Drivers" select the option "Multiple driver folder" & from the popped up window select the "sata" folder containing your SATA drivers. Once selected, another pop-up window will list all the drivers that the selected folder contained. Depressing the "Ctrl" key select all of them & proceed to the next screen.





12. In the next screen on "Processing" you would receive a pop-up window saying "Do you want to start the process?". Select "Yes" & complete the process.








13. After the processing is complete, you would see an informative screen as shown below. Now click on "Next".









14. Atlast comes the final screen on "Bootable ISO". Here you can select various options & directly burn your customised WinXP Bootable CD. Insert your Blank CD onto the CD-RW drive & change the "Mode" in the "General" section to "Direct Burn". Now give an appropriate "Label" & click on "Burn" to burn THAT precious CD.





Now you are fully prepared to boot your Compaq Presario laptop & downgrade the OS from Windows Vista to Windows XP Pro along with SP3 pre-installed.

Wasn't this simple enough for those guys stuck up with any unwanted OS. Try it out yourself & do post your comments if you have any queries.

Consolidating Social Networking Sites

Orkut, Facebook, Yaari, Wayn, Friendster, MySpace, Hi5... the list is endless. Its nowadays become a nuisance of receiving friends requests from most of these sites.

With the boom of Instant Messenger applications we had sites like Meebo, e-Buddy coming into the picture, which would log you on to multiple IM servers. I feel very soon we are going to see many such web-based applications aimed at having a consolidated social networking experience.

Don't you feel just one among these whole lot (like Orkut or Facebook) is more that enough to satisfy your social networking needs. So please think twice before sending a friend request in a new SN (a.ka. Social Networking) site. Also ensure that the option of automatic initiated friend request from your address book is not enabled.

Let electronic communication not lead to spamming !!!

Preventing Account Lockout on NetBanking Sites

Too much security can sometimes lead to other types of problems. This is what I have been facing when the Online Trading site of HDFC Securities changed its policy of changing passwords every 14 days. 30 days of password age is acceptable, but 14 days !!!... thats too less of a time in a world surrounded by PINs & Passwords. But, I have no option, have to accept it. But what happens with this is I frequently forget the sites' password as the password complexity rules are also too complex - to be changed in 14 days, alphanumeric with at least 1 character in upper case & last but not the least, TO BE DIFFERENT FROM LAST 5 PASSWORDS. So I had to device a way to recollect the password in case I forget it.

8 Tips to password recovery in an Online NetBanking site -

1. Keep your head cool. Forgetting a password is not the end of your world.
2. Start the recovery procedure with a fresh mind.
3. Keep a pen & paper handy.
4. Make yourself aware about how many attempts you are allowed to try your luck before your account gets locked.
5. Don't try the maximum possible attempts at a stretch. So if you allowed 10 attempts, try your luck with 6 attempts & then give a break of at least a couple of hours before attempting again. Remember, the maximum number of attempts specified in any site is for a single session, so if you try again after an hour or so, it is considered as a separate session & thus you don't exhaust all your options.
6. After each unsuccessful attempt write down the password that you attempted. This is to prevent repetition of incorrect passwords.
7. Last but not the least, pray to god & try your level best to recollect your forgotten password.
8. Once you recover your password use a Password Management application like Access Manager to store your critical passwords in a secure place.

I must say this is the way I tried my luck & was successful in recollecting back my password. If I would have not recollected the password successfully, I had no option but to give an application to my Banking Service Provider to reissue a fresh password via Snail Mail, a process which would have taken at least a week or so.